Magic talk always made Xander’s eyes glaze over. Oh, at first it was kind of interesting, but after a while it became not unlike “Oh holy jockstrap, protect us in thy cups”, and he couldn’t care less. So he closed his eyes and tried to catch a few Z’s while Giles, Willow, and that snarky Mordred were sitting on the floor, hands joined together over a small sprawl of tiny animal bones, fragments of crystal, and a sprinkling of herbs that reminded him vaguely of Thanksgiving dinner at his Great Aunt Vicki’s house. (All that was missing was the bitter recriminations, the drunken arguments that end in thrown yams and hurt feelings, and the faint but undeniable smell of Alka Seltzer and Wild Turkey.) Supposedly they formed a triangle, but it was hard to tell.

Angel was trying not to pace - he’d start, then stop himself, and stand around awkwardly, like he was waiting for a bus that was twenty minutes late. Bren was tapping away on his computer, trying to find out where Wolfram and Hart had set up a new Southern California branch. Mordred had given them some of the aliases they worked under in Europe, and Bren was trying to see if he could tie the name into any recent real estate purchases. So this was Angel’s new life, huh? Pretty damn dull. He didn’t feel so bad for having almost no life outside his job. If the choice was that and this - killing demons, dealing with whacked out gods, getting to the root of evil by catching them in real estate transactions - then bring on his messy apartment and the California Pizza Kitchen.

Faith was just as bored as he was, and when Angel commented about Bob not being here for this, she jumped to her feet and said she’d go find him. He knew she was just eager to go so she could escape the magic mumbo jumbo, but he couldn’t help but wonder if she thought that bozo was attractive. Everybody acted like he was, but he wasn’t that good looking. Yeah, he had the flash clothes (when he wasn’t bleeding all over them), but it must have been the accent - chicks digged accents, right? It was so unfair.

When Faith came back, she was alone, and smiling in such a twisted a way it looked like she was trying not to laugh. “Um, he’s gonna be a minute.”

She threw herself on the end of the couch lightly, and Angel was giving her a hard look. “Did he say why?”

Again that lopsided smile. “No, but he didn’t hafta.”

Angel’s scrutinizing gaze was pulled away by the fact that Will, Giles, and Mordred started to glow, the center of their “triangle” starting to fill with a milky, translucent energy. It was impressive and bright, but other than that, it didn’t seem to mean much.

He looked over at Faith, and asked quietly, “So what’s he doin’? He afraid to come out?”

She snickered slightly, watching the light show. “Naw, he and Naomi are just burning off some steam.”

It was only when he remembered what Faith’s idea of “burning off steam” was that it hit him. He stared at her in wide eyed horror. “You mean … she and him are … how could she?!”

Faith continued to grin drunkenly, amused by him. “What? Do I have to draw you a diagram? Oh, wait, I get it - you wanted to tap that, huh? Got a taste for older women?”

“No! It’s just that … well, at least I know she’s not a demon. That makes for a change.” How could Naomi fall for that guy’s transparent bullshit? The look Faith was giving him was annoying him, so he shot back, “Didn’t you want to nail Bob?”

She shrugged casually, as if she’d hardly thought about it. (Liar!) “I wouldn’t say no. Still wouldn’t. He sounds fun.”

Xander had to repress a shudder. Good lord, he so didn’t want to know any of this. He wanted to boil his head to erase the mental pictures his brain was kicking up. As if to spare him further anguish, his stomach growled rather loudly, and he realized not only hadn’t he gotten any sleep, but he didn’t get dinner last night, and now he was starving.

Faith heard it, and said, “Aren’t you supposed to say “excuse you”?”

“Why? You just said it for me.”

“Lazy. Actually, I’m kinda hungry too. Did you see that Chinese place at the end of the block?”

He did. It was one of those cheap teriyaki joints that seemed to spread like herpes in a nudist colony, that didn’t offer the best food, and in fact was probably a great place to get a nasty case of food poisoning. But he was so hungry, it still sounded appealing. “Wanna go?”

“Sure. Beats hangin’ around here, listening to chanting.” She got up, and he slowly unfolded himself from the couch, quietly amazed at how much his life had and hadn’t changed over the years. He’d tried to leave the supernatural stuff behind him, and yet here he was, with a reformed, unstable Slayer, Will at her witchy best (either she had dyed her hair red, or it grew back in that color; either way, he was glad, as he never quite got used to her with white hair), Giles at his world weariest, and Angel still doing his broody thing. Maybe it was some form of Stockholm Syndrome, but his life without the drama, the chaos, the fear, seemed strangely colorless, and he could never quite believe it was real; he kept waiting for it all to collapse around him, for his real life to come stomping though the door and drag him off by the hair. Not that he was looking forward to it, but the waiting seemed intolerable.

Angel looked at them curiously. “Where are you going?”

“Gonna go get some chow from the Chinese place,“ Faith replied. “Want anything?”

If a look could be said to be sardonic, that’s exactly what he gave her. “No.” He looked between them, brow furrowing, and suddenly Xander had a bit of a flashback. To the time Faith almost killed him, and how Angel - of all possible people - saved his life. And yet, he still treated him like the bloodsucking fiend he was, while Angel never pointed out “I saved your life, you sorry sack of shit”. What did that mean? That Angel was more forgiving than he was? Now there was a frightening though - a vampire being more compassionate than him. But he had forgiven Faith when all of them were convinced the bitch needed to be locked in a vault and the key thrown away. Maybe the person who wanted forgiveness most recognized when someone else needed it, even if they weren’t sure.

God, listen to his thoughts, He was going to pass out in a minute. He really needed to cram some food down his throat before he started singing “Age of Aquarius”.

“Okay, Back in a minute,” Faith replied, and lead the way towards the door. To him, almost as an aside, she added, “We should really pick up some extra for Bob and Naomi. They’ll be starving - I know I am after sex.”

He scowled at her, which just made her grin broadly. “Stop that!”

“You’re such a prude,” she teased.

“I am not. I just don’t want to think about Bob … naked.”

That was the wrong thing to say, judging from the look on her face. It was going to be one of those days, wasn’t it? What the hell was he thinking? He had one of those lives.

*****

They sat in a dark bar, full of professional drinkers and the habitually unemployed, and had a couple of beers while Marc tried to pry secrets out of him. He wanted to know what Abrams had told him, and Logan wasn’t sure he even had the energy to speak. He felt drained, as if Abrams had somehow sucked the life right out of him.

He told him what he’d said about Stryker, and Marc shook his head in disgust. "See, now that's a crazy fucker. We sure he's dead?"

"Positive."

"Can we dig him up, just so I can put a couple of rounds in his head?"

He smirked, glancing up at the t.v. screen behind the bar. For some reason it was showing lacrosse - which he honestly didn't think of as a sport, just a waste of time - probably because it was too early to show any other sport. It was a funny thing, he usually didn't watch sports at all, he had no patience for it, but when he was in Canada he occasionally craved a good hockey game. Stereotype or a form of cultural brainwashing? Maybe it meant he spent too much time watching t.v. in bars.

Marc took a pull off his beer before asking, "What else did he say? You seem pretty glum."

"I'm always glum."

"No, you're always crabby."

He glared at him. "There's a difference?"

"It's a fine line, but yes. So come on, what else did he say?"

He shook his head, took a swig of his beer, and glanced up at lacrosse. Ah, the sport of college students needing a credit. "I don't wanna talk about it."

"Man, you are such a woman sometimes."

"This from the guy with the sequined thongs."

"Hey, I don't go for no sequins - it's feathers all the way, baby."

For some reason, that made him laugh. Maybe it was the mental image of Marc in feathered underwear. Marc elbowed him good naturedly, cracking a smile. "See? I knew I can make the spymaster laugh."

"Spymaster? What the fuck?"

"Oh, come on - you know that makes all kinds of sense. First of all, not just anyone can drop out of society for what, fifteen years or so? That takes talent, especially in this day and age. You have to work hard not to be noticed, not to leave a traceable trail, but you did it a lot longer than I ever could have managed. Then there's that whole disguising thing - you're good at it for a guy of your hairstyle. You even change your posture, which is a detail many people forget, and you know to hit the thrift stores. You lie really convincingly - another talent - and you got the lingo down. Sitrep? Egress? Where the hell'd you pick that up? Somehow I don't think they talk that way at Xavier's."

He put his beer bottle down on the bar, slightly troubled by the drift of this conversation. He wasn't kidding, he wasn't joking, and that made it all worse somehow. But why did it bother him? He already knew some bits and pieces about his past, he knew what he did for the Organization, but he never quite thought of himself as a spy. An assassin, yes, but those were two different things, no matter what Hollywood implied.

"I'm freakin' you out," Marc concluded.

"No. I'm just ... not used to the idea."

"What? Weren't you behind enemy lines in World War Two? Fucking hell, man, if that doesn't make you a spy, what does?"

"I think I was more of a saboteur there," he offered, but he honestly wasn't sure. It wasn't like he could remember it.

And just the thought of what he couldn't remember brought the name back - Genevieve. Genie. Christ, how many people had he buried in his life? How many were dead because of him? "I was wondering if you could find somethin' for me. Use those detective skills of yours."

Mark quirked an eyebrow at him. Well, they were detective skills, no matter what he called them. "Sure, what do you need? Want me to dig up some dirt on Abrams?"

"No ... although if you have some spare time, go nuts. I was hoping you could find something that probably isn't available on a computer record." And he told him what he needed to find.

Marc was such a good friend that he tried manfully not to look surprised.

13

Angel was on the verge of looking for Bob when he finally came out, clean of all his mystical wards and dried blood. His hair was damp from washing - a good thing too, since he really reeked of burned dragon - but he actually looked a bit sweaty. Being a Belial - and a weird one at that - he didn't smell bad, or hardly at all (a push?), but it was curious since he knew the air conditioner was working. He might not be able to feel much of a difference (being technically dead, ambient temperature rarely mattered to him), but the AC rattled like a jet engine about to fall off its wing. When it was or wasn't working, he knew.

Before Angel could ask if he was all right, Bob looked at what Willow, Mordred, and Giles were doing, and said, "Ooh, this is good."

In between the three of them, a small three dimensional model of the city was forming, a map carved from smoke. The chanting continued, and the amount of power was making the hair rise on the back of his neck. They could technically find anything with a location spell this powerful, up to and including a needle in a gutter down on Sunset.

Bob went and sat on the arm of the couch, watching intently. Angel considered asking, but the moment had passed, and the tension in the room seemed reverent somehow, respectful. Wes was standing just beyond Giles, watching the spell intently, as if he was going to coach them if they forgot their lines.

Naomi came out into the room, and asked him quietly, “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good,” he replied, and suddenly realized her hair looked damp, and she seemed a little flushed. Before he could ask her if she was all right, the office door opened, and Xander and Faith came in, both carrying big plastic bags of Chinese food. Bob looked at them with happy surprise. “Ooh, food. How’d you know?”

“Wild guess,” Faith said, with a knowing smirk. Now what was that about?

So the three of them started spreading the cartons of food out on the coffee table, and Naomi went over and joined them as they started passing out plastic forks, but Angel didn’t pay much attention to them, as the spell was complete, and bits of sparkling light materialized from thin air and fell upon the smoke city within the triangle as if it were rain.

After a moment, a small dot of blue light began to glow. Wesley clapped his hands together as if he was done with a job. “Here we go.”

Angel took a few steps closer, to get a better look at the city “map”. “Okay, it seems like he’s beneath the Del’Oro Building. They don’t have any ties to Wolfram and Hart, do they?”

“Checking,” Bren said crisply, then added, “Can I have an egg roll?”

As Xander tossed him an egg roll wrapped in a napkin, Willow said hesitantly, “Umm, I think we did something wrong.” No one knew what she meant until they all saw the second glowing spot of blue light, this one farther away and near the ocean. (In the ocean?)

“Did you neglect to mention he had a twin?” Mordred commented archly.

Bob hastily swallowed a mouthful of Mongolian Beef, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, he can bilocate. Briefly, he can’t do it forever, but he can do it for a bit.”

“Bilocate?” Xander asked, a forkful of fried rice paused half way between the carton and his mouth.

“Be in two places at once,” Giles told him, studying the ghost city with a worried frown. “How much power does he retain when he’s bilocating?”

“That’s just it - he’s down to half. Half in one place, and half in another. What we want to do is make him bilocate, as it will make him easier to kill.”

“Oh,” Bren said, in a way that suggested a dead body just fell out of his closet. “Uh, the Del’Oro building is owned by Waltar F. Mohr.” Not original; it was an anagram for “Wolfram Hart”. “But, um, Mohr also owns Paradigm Studios. Does that mean something?”

Mordred sighed wearily. “Besides trouble? No, boy, not much.”

But Bob got a strange look on his face. At first, Angel thought maybe he’d bitten into something strange in his General Tso’s, but the look in his eye turned hard and glittery; he was thinking of something - or someone - he wanted to be rid of. “We need to hit him two ways. He’ll be expecting a mystical attack - it’s all we can do, right? - but we need to hit him with a physical one as well. It will confuse and irritate him, and since he’s an arrogant bastard like his mother, he’ll assume he can bilocate and take us out twice as fast.”

“We can’t attack him physically,” Angel pointed out, wondering what Bob had been doing in the back offices. Drinking? “He’s a god. he’ll wipe out the first person who gets near him.”

“Not if we have enough protective wards in place.”

Mordred snorted derisively. “I’m not sure there’s enough in this world.”

“The ritual of Chien Tong,” Bob countered.

Angel had never heard of that. But judging from the looks of shock and horror on Giles and Willow’s faces - Mordred just looked grimly amused - it wasn’t good. “You’re insane,” Giles finally said.

But Wesley paced back to where Angel was, and seemed to ponder that. “Bob must feel very guilty about what he unleashed upon the world.”

“Why?” Only when it was out of his mouth did Angel realize he’d said it aloud. But it was okay, because Giles thought he was asking him.

“Why? Because … because the amount of magic channeled is insane. It’s guaranteed fatal.”

“Not to me,” Mordred said, and pulled a Galois out of nowhere. He didn’t light it yet, but chomped on it like a person might chew on a toothpick. “I am magic; it cannot harm me. Much.”

Giles shook his head. “You’re half-Human; you’re partially vulnerable.”

“Not if he proxies it,” Bob said, and pointed a chopstick back at himself. “Me. I’m in a Belial shell, but I am a Power, and fragments linger in my blood. Mordred and I can connect, and share the power load. We can throw protections on the fighters, and when the time comes, we can take Ananga out.”

Faith waved a hand in the air. “Hey, is there an English version of this?”

Willow shifted uncomfortably on the floor, as if her legs were starting to fall sleep. “It’s a spell that basically channels all the free floating magical energy of this plane into a vessel. The problem is, it’s hard for the vessel to control it, and usually it ends with the vessel being … burnt away, from the inside out. It’s not pretty.”

“But Mordred and I can link; we can share the burden. It shouldn’t kill either of us.”

“He’s guessing,” Wesley said. “He wants it to work. He really doesn’t know if it will.”

Angel had figured that part out for himself. But he also knew Bob wasn’t suicidal, and he wouldn’t have volunteered to do it if he didn’t think he could handle it. Yet Bob could push his own limits to the breaking point - he knew that from past experience.

“Maybe we need a bit more help,” Mordred said, although he wasn’t prepared to back out. Hell, if Bob didn’t first, there was no way in hell he was going to. “Anybody know where we can get some carnite?”

“What, a dietary supplement?” Bren said, noisily crunchy on his egg roll.

Mordred gave him an evil scowl. “No. It’s a rare ore that’s a real pain in the ass to the type of demons Indrani is queen of.”

“Indrani? The Hindu goddess?” Giles seemed only mild surprised by the mention of her name.

Mordred nodded. “Also a demon goddess and Ananga’s mum, right Bob?”

Bob glared at him, and briefly held his chopstick like it was a stake he was about to pound through his chest. “Yes. But Indrani got rid of all the carnite as soon as she found out about it. It doesn’t exist anymore.”

Faith shrugged, chewing idly on a potsticker. “So? We stab him, it’ll still hurt, right?”

Bob shook his head. “His body’s merely a shell; he’s really an energy being. So we can irritate him, but that’s about … “ he trailed off suddenly, and shot a sharp look at Mordred, still sitting on the floor and chewing on his Galois. “There’s a rare metal related to carnite, isn’t there?”

Mordred had to think about it a moment, but when he finally guessed at it, Wesley raised his eyebrows at that. “Oh dear. This is going to get interesting.”

Wasn’t it just?

*****

He didn’t know how he did it, but by consulting his laptop and making two phone calls, Marc found it. Although he hadn’t told him much about it, he seemed to understand his need to do this alone. Sometimes he thought Marc was a better friend than he deserved.

Logan wandered the grounds, which were almost impossibly wide and well tended, with stones sticking up evenly along the rolling green lawns. He already knew from talking to the groundskeeper that what he was looking for was way in the back, in the “old part”.

He crunched through fallen leaves, passed beneath gnarled old oaks, walked besides mausoleums that looked carved from alabaster. He knew he’d reached the oldest section when he saw stones crumbled like rotten teeth, vines twining over the statue of a broken angel, its right wing reduced to a jagged stump, and clutches of scraggily trees attempting to grow where they weren’t wanted. He missed what he was looking for the first time, but for some reason he looked towards a sad looking maple, and saw the stones.

He knelt down in front of one of them, clearing off years of dirt and mold, and finally uncovered the words lost underneath, eroded now to faint outlines: Genevieve Simone Theriault Logan. Beneath her names, along with birth and death dates, was the legend “Beloved Wife and Daughter”. He felt a twinge in his stomach, but little else. He’d been expecting this.

Moving slowly, as if under water, he cleared away the detritus from the second headstone, the one on Genevieve’s right side, only to find the name Alexander Camus Logan on it. There was no legend of explanation, and he knew the birth date - as well as the “death” date, was wrong. How twisted was the Organization? They got him a tombstone, but buried nothing but an empty coffin, all to keep up the idea that this man - whoever he was - was dead.

The third, the one on her left … god, he knew what that one was, didn’t he?  Still, he forced himself to do it, stomach burning as he cleared away the mud, and finally he saw it: Matthew Christopher Logan. Their son.  Reading the dates, he saw he was seven years old when he died.  Where had those seven years gone? Where had all these years gone?

“I’m sorry I don’t remember you,” he said quietly to both Matt’s and Genie’s tombstones. Rain started misting down, and a cold wind sighed through the trees. “I wish I could. I never meant to forget you. They made me.”

But even as he said it, the words felt like ashes in his mouth. He should have fought them harder; he should have held on to the memories of his wife and son. If he held on to Mariko, why couldn’t he hold on to them? The sorrow and pain he felt was almost intolerable; it seemed to twist his stomach into Gordian knots, and his hands curled into fists unbidden.

Marc was right. They should dig up Stryker and beat the living shit out of his corpse. He couldn’t die enough for this crime, for all these crimes.

It was then he was startled by a sudden trilling noise, and only after he turned and jumped to his feet, ready (and very much willing) to fight, he realized it was Bob’s cell phone, which he’d stuck in his pocket before he left the cabin. Annoyed, he grabbed it out of his jacket pocket, and considered throwing it against the nearest tree, but instead he flicked it open and snapped, “This better be fucking good.”

There was a very wary pause before a man’s voice said, “Umm, well, it depends on your definition of good.”

“Angel?” he replied, surprised enough that his anger died down. Well, for now.

Maybe the best part of all of this was Angel wouldn’t call him unless he needed help kicking something’s ass. And he very much needed to hurt something right now.

Very, very much.